Whilst studying at Cambridge University, Cecil Beaton had attended a talk given by Eliot but he did not photograph him until twenty years later. In his diaries, Beaton claimed that Eliot initially refused to be photographed because he was unsure which type of collar would be suitable: 'a soft one would look untidy and Bohemian, and yet he could not bring himself to be perpetuated in a starched one.' After consenting to the sitting Eliot later wrote to Beaton to praise the 'astonishingly successful effect' he had achieved. A variant pose from the sitting was included in Beaton's book, The Face of the World (1957).